To the Bored All Things Are Boring
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1. You don’t enjoy the thing you’re doing for itself, intrinsically
2. You can’t see how doing this thing now adds up to a greater purpose and long-term goal. This lack of a path leads to a loss of interest in the particular moment.
For #1, I really like what Japanese thought has to say about this. More specifically, Zen Buddhist-adjacent ideas like wabi sabi and the haiku poetry form. [1] They really help you center yourself on the moment and appreciate the impermanence of existence, which gets rid of that “wasted time” feeling.
#2 is more tricky and this problem is more endemic to modernity as a whole. I’m not sure what the solution is, other than to make long-term life plans and consistently fight off all of the cultural pressure to discard them and YOLO instead.
1. I wrote about wabi sabi and haiku on my (somewhat inactive) Substack last year, which you might find interesting:
This curiosity flywheel builds momentum through our actions. Nobody else can spark it for us; we must actively nurture it. The trick is keeping our attention open to catch novel sparks from the world, rather than retreating to the safe and known.
I found in my day to day life, everything is getting boring. Work cannot hold a candle to how interesting games or movies are. It's almost become a depression, is the rest of my life going to be THIS boring?
Anything too passive like watching films/series, or playing single player games which takes 40-80h to complete can bore the hell out of me but skill-based games are almost like crack. Same to creative efforts, making music (while trying to improve on it), photography, woodworking, they all put me into hyperfocus mode easily.
Adult life with all the duties is exhausting and drains mental/physical energy every day, to the point that nothing _meaningful_ can be achieved really. No, usually work is pointless exchange of time/energy vs money in order to live comfortably, sometimes sugarcoated in a higher "mission/vision".
Being in a stressed state also favors a mindset of "getting it done" with the actual goal of getting rid of the task at hand, aka "productivity", and some people think that a series of these completitions are a trajectory towards something rewarding - for me it isn't.
But when there are these moments where duties (work, kids, household, ...) are actually done, when there is no desire to play/watch the latest thing right now, this is when the good kind of boredom kicks in for me:
aimless reflection. mentally consolidating myself into the world, where am I, where things are going to, where I want to be next, how to probably get there. Going through it feels very relaxing, and activates some very existential kind of creativity (not the "solve the problem smarter thing), and fuels my energy a lot more than anything else in life. Being in this bored state is a precursor of feeling control over life again, and adjusting the inner compass to get updated directions to follow.
... but this doesn't happen when being busy/distracted, a state that drains my energy, and even accumulates dread every single day until the stressors are gone again and I feel "bored".
>usually work is pointless exchange of time/energy vs money
This is a terrible normality, if you don't have a greater vision to work towards by yourself, at least find work that is fun.
and with making money, some amounts of duties are attached, depending on how you do it. more like a "pick your poison" situation instead of being optional entirely.
also I have sold too many visions to too many people by myself professionally to actually believe the "change the world" bullshit anymore, ever. organizations first and foremost exist to make money, even charities at some point either prioritize it to some extend or they cease to function, and charities also tend to not pay well compared to real industry jobs, so again trade-offs.
you can say "well thats the system" or "thats how capitalism works!" - and then you have it, "the system" forced these duties onto myself.
I personally would prefer an environment not focussed on money, being able to live comfortably and being able to do things that are interesting or truly helpful for others instead. But hey, most people can imagine the literal end of the world easier than the end of capitalism, even though the concept itself isn't that old or "god given" to begin with.
people discussing the "future of work" in the face of rising AI and robotics really should have a look at Marx again how this will play out.
As you pointed correctly, the focus is mainly on the comfort level. For people who are in economically low, criminal countries or war situations it's a matter of survival and is different.
So in more or less developed countries it's not a question of survival but a question of comfort. And the important thing we must understand about comfort is that it is an endless pursuit, there is any number of examples of people having unimaginable amount of money and comfort and still wanting more.
Being aware that our life time is limited and comfort level is endless the smart thing would be to decide: how much comfort do I need realistically? And it's different from person to person and for different stages in life, there is no common prescription.
Yes the "system" forces us to some extent, but the desire for comfort levels does it on a much bigger scale. So while there are economic, political and social systems that affect us, considering all this an individual should make a decision on how much money/comfort is enough for them and how to earn it, ideally aligning with what one cares for in their life, or at least something one finds fun in.
This way one can be conscious and stop seeing their job as "pointless" or "poison" but instead as something that enables their current level of comfort (which they consciously chose) and other things they can do with the remaining time.
Still I question the rules/system as a whole.
Speaking very optimistically: we're about to enter a phase of abundance, where "robots do the work" including "robots build more/better robots" can likely happen in the next decades. The very idea of everyone having to work at all in this scenario is outdated, even if it might need a forceful/violent redistribution of wealth (again) to not end up in some weird dystopia.
Basically I'd like to everyone (not just me) to have a default comfort level that is at least my current baseline, without and tradeoffs/sacrifices to be made elsewhere in ones life. And then the decision process should start about what to do with life, and very likely the outcome would be vastly different for many people compared to right now. And I strongly believe quite a lot of people would fill their days with what we now would call "work" or pushing boundaries in various areas - but decidedly so.
Imagine the sheer amount of innovations that could happen if the current top tier talent that works on marketing/ads today would spend their time doing actually useful/cool things instead of hunting the money of their current jobs. Even just a fraction of those people. It might introduce a new Renaissance in society to free up the cogwheels from the rat races!
Sure, this is what the whole social and economic systems are for, todays comfort levels are much better than 100-300 years ago. I surely hope AI will raise the bar soon, while it is happening it's good to understand how we ended up where we are and accept that so we can be ready for the changes.
example: time with kids.
when there are tradeoffs everywhere, and assume I am in the more money/less time spectrum, there are situations where I simply have to kill time with the kids or get them engaged somehow. Its not quality time at all, its mostly a distraction while other duties are piling up on top. I feel guilty, and the kids probably won't have a great time.
This is a vastly different situation when there are no conflicting duties in that moment, and I can freely decide to spent quality time with them, and be creative upfront about what cool endeavor we could tackle together.
The point is that I want to be always in the latter state, without making any sacrifices on amenities/comfort because of that.
Aligning everything perfectly in todays world as-is basically means hitting the lottery jackpot. The high paying jobs are either bullshit/boring or the good ones extremely rare, there are market reasons why they're paid highly in most cases after all. So its either sucking it up or make sacrifices elsewhere.
Basically I played the current game with the hand given to me as good as possible, and quite successful measured by some standards. But most things still feel utterly useless after all, even though well paid. Can fully reasonate with the "bullshit jobs" narrative.
_So many_ people are desperately trying to extract money from a system without providing any substantial value to society beyond a vague narrative, argumented as "if its useless nobody would pay for it!" that doesn't really reflect reality today.
That seems to be at odds with the thought that you would have done things differently. Obviously knowing how the cards fell in retrospect, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback so to speak.
I used to work a job I considered bullshit, and I changed to something that feels more real. It didn't exactly make a new man out of me, but it's helped a lot with the feelings you're describing. I wouldn't rule it out for yourself.
Personally I am like 9 years away from FIRE, so there is some light at the end of the tunnel, but still bitter about the whole system, especially when thinking about the future for my kids.
It's probably linked to my ADHD, it's one of the most frustrating states I can find myself in.
But at least I plow through normal difficulties, which helps me organize holidays and house maintenance better, which helps me find much better fulfillment in life.
Worst part is that you don't always know what that certain thing is. Ever feel hungry but you scroll through places aimlessly and can't put your finger on that "taste" you want? Happened to me today.
Also, bored people are typically boring people.
Remove all social media, stop reading the news, get on top of your finances, keep a small but significantly valued group of friends, have a vision for your life, and have honbies and side projects, and failing all that - get off your ass and go for a walk. If you’re disabled that last part makes things tricky though unfortunately for some.
I’m never bored, there’s too many rabbit holes and too much work to do
Can't really avoid "manipulation" without withdrawing entirely from the world it's less important to avoid manipulation than it is to have a good moral compass when evaluating biases. Another decreasing factor of modern humanity.
But yeah go ahead and assume I'm a thoughtless sheep, very condescending of you. Of course your intellect is so superior
This is such a bad sentiment. Being bored is fine and a normal part of existance, it doesn't make a person boring. There are LOTS of reasons to get bored and we don't all need to feel stimulated all of the time. Being bored can push people to do something new, being bored can just be down to having to watch Cars with your kid for the 1000th time because they want to watch it with you and you don't always put your own self first. Being bored can also be due to burnout, trying to chase all the shiney new stuff to make yourself feel interesting.
The subtext is that when motivated and engaged people feel bored they find something to do. They recognize that the emotion they experience does not indicate that the world is devoid of engaging activities and ideas.
Someone may be boring within a situational context, but that context may persist throughout someone’s entire life.
Most people have some contexts within which they are engaged or exciting, and some where they are not.
Lacking mental energy to engage and not doing things has real consequences. It doesn’t mean they are bad people, but it is just realistic to acknowledge those consequences, like saying quadriplegics are usually bad at marathons.
It is a temporary condition. At some point on thousandth rabbit hole you'll feel yourself bored, and decide not to dive deeper, because what is the point. Probably you will be able to use rabbit holes as a means to fight boredom for some time afterwards, but it would be harder and harder with time passed.
Many people I know felt something like that with video games. Video games were interesting. Then they became not so interesting. And then people just lost the point of playing video games. My brother was constantly upgrading his PC to play newest titles. Now he is still upgrading his PC, because it makes him feel happy, but he doesn't play anymore. I never upgraded my PC to play a game, I played those that could run on the hardware I had. Now I don't play games either. I try sometimes to play to fight boredom, but it doesn't work, it is more boring to play now than not to play.
> Remove all social media, stop reading the news, get on top of your finances, keep a small but significantly valued group of friends, have a vision for your life
You know, it is easier to learn how to deal with boredom than to achieve all this points. Some people never manage to have friends or to get on top of their finances.
All these things is what maybe makes you immune to boredom. It doesn't mean it will help others: people are wonderfully different. But the worse: probably all these things have nothing to do with your lack of boredom. What you witness is a correlation, it doesn't have to be a causation, it can even be a spurious correlation.
I do still enjoy making numbers go up when I don't have to pay anything beyond an initial purchase, though (i.e. I still like playing games)
Neat, I just need to get a job... oh, jobs aren't biting, not much I can do except study... oh, don't have time (nor money) to do fun stuff.
Yeah, I've admittedly been a boring person the past 15 months or so. I wouldn't confuse boring with lethargic, though. You really can't do much more than meander around to keep up your physical spirits up and invert binary trees to keep your metal spirits up while you wait between rounds of tech interviews that (these days) have a 70% chance to ghost you.
The problem is the opposite of having too many options. If I have options, if the situation allows my mind wonder, if I don't need to focus, but instead can think about anything, I can easily sit there for hours without getting bored.
While I kind of despise the platitude you were leading with about boring people being bored. I think this sentiment is key. By removing modern stimulation (including checking HN too often), you get bored at first, very bored, until your mind can appreciate the novelty it finds on its own instead of being spoon-fed by the constant online shouting match.
> I’m never bored
This is a contradiction, finding someone or something boring means you are bored by it ;)
I'm old enough to be able to remember when there were ~6 TV channels, and, really, only 4 of them actually worked.
You had option A, B, C, or D, and you picked on. Usually it came down to an A or B.
Now with 300 channels I get lost in choosing something, and ultimately default to something generic as background noise as opposed to actually giving it my attention.
See also: Fromm's Escape From Freedom
I was curious to see the non-obvious, eye-opening solution.
But the solution is a reworded “resign yourself to boredom.”
I still appreciate this conclusion, and it’s the one I expected from the article’s opener, but I’m not sure how else to describe fixing this.
Expect to be bored. It’s a superpower if you can embrace it. Definitely not healthy to flit from one exciting but fleeting activity to the next.
> For example, in meetings or while waiting for transportation
So why did you end up in that meeting or transportation? Because there is some end goal that you want to achieve, but your mind is not focused enough to see this. If you become aware of being bored just remind yourself what is your end goal and consciously see that the situation you are in is the best way known to you (at least right now) to achieve it.
No point imagining a wonderful summer vacation in Paris when you barely have $1000 in the bank for in case the car breaks down.
Or go outside and take a walk.
Or assuming you have a computer, go online and learn one of hundreds of subjects for free.
Or if you have paper and a pencil, doodle or write something.
I was 'trapped doing boring stuff' at school all the time growing up, especially in elementary school and junior high which were always way too easy for me, but I would pass the time away during class by either daydreaming, or doodling, or writing poems, or trying to invent a new language, or printing stories in tiny font and reading them, or brainstorming ideas for things to do later, or designing levels to new video games I thought I'd create someday, or drawing out the structure of a web site I wanted to make, and then later when I got a calculator you could code on, I was coding simple games on it.
What if I said the interesting person is the one that will tolerate being bored doing something boring, in order to be able to do the thing that satisfies their imagination and appetite for interesting experiences? Like you were forced to at school? Unfortunately many people are trapped being bored doing boring things as a means to an end for much longer than just childhood: That doesn't make them boring.
I could go even more extreme as an example and go back to the year I worked in a factory. I could have been bored out of my mind while sequencing and examining car parts, but instead I let myself daydream and think about things like crazy, and wrote down notes for various thoughts I had and things to do after work when I had a spare moment. In some ways I miss that, as my current job robs a good chunk of my mental energy for the day, also I was a lot more fit back then because I was constantly moving during my job (I don't miss the 90 degree heat with only an industrial fan to cool me off though, nor the fraction of the pay I was making then compared to now).
Sometimes people that are bored come across to me like my partner when she says there's nothing she feels like eating out, despite us living in an extremely restaurant rich area (we could go to almost 100 different restaurants and almost two dozen different types of regional cuisines in about a 15 minute drive). Although she's already decided she doesn't ever want to eat at like 20 of them, and there's still at least 50 she's never tried eating at once.
Meanwhile I once worked at a place that was far enough away from anything that you had to bring food from home for lunch, except on Fridays, when we'd pool money together to make a big delivery order of wings from a pub 15+ minutes away (lunch was a hard 30 minutes, and you'd get in big trouble if you were late, so no time to go get lunch). Same place as that factory, actually. Our current situation feels luxurious compared to that.
They are being overly picky about how they want to spend their time and attention, when there's so many options out there, even cheap or free activities (and even the non-cheap things can at least be saved towards, usually, barring some health reasons that prevent you from doing it in the first place...like it's probably a bad idea for me to go whitewater kayaking at my current fitness level, but if I really wanted to I could lose some weight and build up some muscle and maybe practice doing some kayaking on a calm pond first).
So it's a shallow and naive statement that ignores externalities either way.
I know which person I'd rather converse with, wealth doesn't really matter.
I did though. Otherwise what you're saying is that you've never known someone whose imagination and appetite for experiences was not constrained by their wealth. You've never know someone who had to endure boredom doing boring things in order to have a shot at doing the things that did interest them. That would be quite the luxurious and unencumbered circle to inhabit.
> Your assertion that 'wealth does matter' is as orthogonal to the original as 'wealth doesn't matter'
Re-removing the constraint from my example to make an orthogonal point has nothing to do with why I introduced it in the first place to disprove the original point - that's not really how the logic works.
> and there are plenty of examples in favour of each position
Yes and I only need one to disprove the original assertion. Thankfully I don't have only one - there are literally millions (billions?) of non-boring people who have been in that situation.
My example demonstrated the orthogonal nature of your argument and that it doesn't hold true in all circumstances, and according to your criteria of only needing one example to disprove an assertion, then yours has been dispelled as well.
I'll add that I also dislike the adage 'only boring people get bored'. However I think there is some truth to it, perhaps a more accurate phrasing would be 'people who are always bored are boring people '
I only need to introduce a specific example/constraint to disprove the original assertion: 1
My introduction of the example/constraint is directly relevant to disproving the original point. That is the whole point of introducing it, so it is absolutely not orthogonal.
If you then remove my constraint (1) and say: “but 4 and 16 can both be square numbers”: Sure you're not wrong, but that also has nothing to do with why I introduced my example in the first place, nor does it invalidate my example, and is thus completely orthogonal to proving/disproving the original point.
A person 'doing boring things' isn't necessarily a bored person. The experience of being bored is entirely subjective. One person staring at paint dry could be driven insane but another could be meditating upon the physical experience of the passage of time.
The saying 'bored people are boring people' isn't supposed to be taken literally. It is as logically fallible as any other quip in English, I think the difference with this one is that it is used in a more directly negative and judgmental way (and often perceived as such by the recipient).
Because being bored and be boring is the same exact thing, just said in different words. Is there any thing that is boring for every single human being on the planet? Of course no, this means boredom only exists in our minds. So if you say some one is boring - that has nothing to do with them, it only means your mind is bored. Make sure to understand this clearly and not be trapped by language expressiveness and social influence.
Boring people don't get bored. frustrated people get bored. Especially in an economy like this.
I had that in my head but I was always horrible with "how to enunciate in text" sorts of phrasing.
Bored is a normal and necessary experience. Jamming every waking moment with engagement is something I'll never agree with the world on